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was rare for legal representation to be provided.Informal and private removalsUntil the 1957 Act was passed and the Aborigines Welfare Board established, themain source of outside assistance available to Indigenous people in Victoria was nongovernmentwelfare agencies. The government had long relied upon non-governmentagencies and private individuals to tend public welfare.Between 1887 and 1954 private welfare agencies and individuals were authorised toapprehend children they suspected were neglected, assume guardianship of them andkeep them in institutions or in other forms of care. Children who had been removed bythe police and made State wards were also placed in these privately-run institutions. In1957 there were at least 68 institutions managed by 44 different non-governmentagencies (Leonard Tierney quoted by Victorian Government final submission on page50) and it was not until 1956 that the first two government institutions for children wereopened. Minimum standards of conduct and treatment by non-government agencies werenot imposed until the Child Welfare Act 1954.The lack of welfare regulation meant that offers of temporary assistance accepted byIndigenous families from non-government agencies or individuals could be the start of anirreversible removal process. Although legislation required the registration of houses inwhich children under the age of five years had been ‘privately placed’, this requirementwas largely ignored in relation to Indigenous children.We left Lake Tyers [because the station was being closed down] – I think it was the early1960s – and we went to Ararat and lived there for quite a while … And [my parents] aresort of thinking it’s a new world. We can cope. But unbeknown to them they couldn’t cope.I mean they weren’t taught how to manage money or even live in a white society, becausethey only knew how to live the way that they had lived at Lake Tyers … There was a ladythat came to the vestry. I was forever going to the vestry and seeking help up there becauseof the problems that were happening … She befriended me and said, ‘Would you like tocome and stay with me for a holiday’. When we were at Lake Tyers we were billeted out topeople in Melbourne and went for holidays, then went back home again. Then when I metthis lady and she came down and met my mum and dad … they didn’t want me to go withher. But she just sort of said, ‘You’ll be seeing her. We only want her for a holiday’. Andthey sort of kept to that. And we were coming from Melbourne up to Ararat to see mumand dad all the time, and then my brother had left and lived with people that my fosterparents knew, and he came down and stayed with them and my other sister M-, she cameand stayed with us for a little while but then went back. And then I think it was in 1970 thegovernment sort of stepped in and said, you know, the problems were there and mum anddad couldn’t look after the kids. And they ended up taking the kids – the three of them –away.Confidential evidence 213, Victoria: woman removed at about 12 years. When she was 16 herfather was killed in a road accident while he was hitchhiking to see one of the children.The informality of these ‘private placements’ has made it very difficult for removedchildren to discover how they were taken.